


Day of Silence

by alec



Category: Brave (2012), How to Train Your Dragon (2010), Rise of the Guardians (2012), Tangled (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, Modern Era, Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons, tbh im not even sure how to tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-19 16:02:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1475728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alec/pseuds/alec
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Excerpt from the Merriam-Webster dictionary:</p>
<p><strong>Day of Silence, The.</strong> <em>n</em> A day, usually falling in the third week of April of the Gregorian calendar, when humans of heterosexual orientation are physically muted by an internal biological imperative, lasting for a period of roughly twenty-three hours.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day of Silence

Henry allowed himself to lay on his back, eyes closed but head facing upwards towards the ceiling. The blankets that he had tucked to his chin the night before were balled at his feet, his right leg wrapped tightly in the middle of them. The room wasn't especially chilly; it was the middle of April now, and as he strained his ears to listen, he could faintly make out the sound of rain hitting his window. All the same, his body had probably been exposed to the open air of the room for hours now, and even the ghost of his left leg (present in these mornings when his consciousness was awake but his mind wasn't fully) felt cold. Still not opening his eyes, Henry sat up briefly, groping around at the blankets at his foot with one hand and smoothing the hairs on his leg that stood on end.

He pulled the blankets up to his neck and snuggled deeper into the mattress.

He had woken up before his alarm had gone off; there was no way that he would have been able to sleep through his alarm. But this had been a pattern developing over the past few months, where his body seemed trained to wake twenty minutes before his alarm, no matter what time he seemed to set it for. If his alarm hadn't gone off yet, it wasn't yet six, and it surprised him that he wasn't tired for only having slept four hours.

Henry lay in bed and thought about the silence that he had awoken to. His day started for him in total silence, uninterrupted by the alarm clock. It was ominous, but expected for the 13th of April. 

It was labeled on every major calendar as the 'Day of Silence'. The name had a nice, foreboding ring to it, as though it were the name of a prophecy meant to come full circle. Even though this year it fell on a Monday, most companies would remain closed. It was hard to get any work done on the Day of Silence.

Nobody really knew how to explain it. Some conspiracy theorists made wild claims that the world governments (whatever their definitions of that) had been altering the water supply, to some end. Others — mainly zealots — would claim it was some interference by a Higher Being. There were two schools of thought for the religious: either that God was angry for some transgression in the far distant past, beyond even the memories and records of the oldest religious texts; or, that it was some way of imparting His (or Her) Will on humanity. The majority, however, simply accepted the Day of Silence as a weird quirk of evolution, in the same vein as that of death by old age or of sexual procreation itself — something that simply was fact, and however weird it might seem to reason, it must make sense in some cosmological, higher way.

But whatever the cause, every year in the third week of April was the Day of Silence. And it was what the name implied: most of the world would be unable to talk. It wasn't that they simply abstained from speaking; rather, try as they might, those affected by it were unable to produce any sound whatsoever. It wasn't isolated to any one country or region of the world; anywhere that humans lived, even if they didn't follow the standard calendar, would fall silent for a full day, at the same time. It was a cycle that biologists had down to a prescriptive science, and long had.

It didn't affect _everyone_ though; just enough people that everyone generalised it to, well, ' _everyone_ '. It only affected those who were straight, sexually speaking.

The Day of Silence was a topic that was covered religiously by teachers and parents every year, from the earliest school grade and upwards. Every start of April, the first two weeks would invariably feature lessons by teachers who prepared the same information that students had learned years prior, but presented it as though it were groundbreaking. This was true even at the youngest grades — preschoolers learned about the Day of Silence even while they were learning to master colours. After all, it would be terrifying for a child to wake up one morning and find they inexplicably weren't able to speak.

Still, as encumbering and disruptive as a day where the world didn't speak, it had left a profound impact on society, especially with the birth of modern medicine in the previous century. As Ms. Miller (the bat-faced biology teacher) so proudly explained, that a biological imperative impacted the human race but only along sexuality lines, inspired the earliest genetic scientists to began their study of the human genome by looking for the gene that differentiated those who were heterosexual from those who were not. And while many scientists over the past half century had claimed to isolate the so-called "sexuality gene," each had proven to be inconclusive; it didn't seem that there was 'any one particular gene that determines sexuality', Ms. Miller reiterated to a fiendishly bored Henry, who was slumped down in his chair. 'All the same, however, genetic biology is a new and exciting field, and I hope I get a chance to read your names in journals in the near future!'

From the other side of the room, a ghastly wail pierced the silence, ringing in Henry's ears. A trained response, he whipped the sheets off of himself even as he was throwing his body from the bed. Even without his prosthetic, this dash he made every morning was so ingrained in him that he could have been missing both legs and still have made the journey before the third beep.

What he wasn't prepared for in the darkness, however, was the mechanical pencil that had rolled off of his desk and onto the floor, directly in his hurried path.

"MOTHER _FUCKER_ ," cursed Henry loudly, collapsing on the floor in an ungraceful and rather painful heap of limbs and bruises incurred in the process of flailing madly. Reflexively he grabbed his foot, rubbing at the tiny puncture in the ball of his foot where the pencil had managed to pierce him. Caressing his foot briefly, he dragged himself up and towards the dresser, slamming the alarm clock into silence, before sitting in his chair with tightly pursed lips.

The Day of Silence was the worst day of the year, always.

* * *

Henry threw his bookbag to the ground, pressing his back against the rough brick wall and sliding down into place next to his bag. By the time he reached the floor, he had already decided that grating his back against the coarse surface had been a wholly bad idea. But Henry was never tired until he passed through the doors of the school. That was when the exhaustion hit, en force.

He watched as people moved by in front of him, traversing the locker bays wordlessly but not silently, the sounds of zippered bags being ripped open and books carelessly hitting the backs of metal lockers. There was a keen disinterest looming over Henry. He'd been on school grounds for ten minutes and he wanted the day to be finished. Shutting his eyes and throwing his arm over his bag to foil any thieves, he allowed himself to rest his head against the uncomfortable concrete pillar that marked his friends' meeting spot. Henry wanted nothing else than to drift off to sleep.

Within what must have been no more than four minutes however, there was an aggressive tapping on his head. He knew who it would be, and wasn't disappointed when he peered up into wide green eyes that radiated with almost annoying effervescence.

Standing back to her full height, the blonde girl smiled widely, before throwing out her right hand, thumb pointed upwards in a congratulatory sign. ' _Good_ '. Throwing her arms above her head emphatically, she allowed them to radiate out, arcing out over her body and hitting a girl's backpack in the process. ' _Sun_ ', no, wait, ' _Morning_ '. Arms falling to her sides and mouth turning in a cocky grin, the girl began to shake her shoulders, miming a controlled dry heaving, her right hand coming up to cover her mouth. Despite the primitivity of the display, Henry knew she was supposed to be hiccuping. ' _Good morning, Hiccup!_ '

Henry smiled at Rachael, silently mouthing 'Good morning' in return. On the Day of Silence, very few people spoke. With the majority of the world unable to talk, those who were able to usually didn't. Sure, some chose not to because it was difficult to hold a dialogue with a mute, and others didn't speak because they felt uncomfortable being the minority in their group. From a young age, though, Henry chose not to speak on the Day of Silence because it felt rude: if his friends couldn't speak, he didn't want to either.

Across the narrow divide between wall and locker bays (no more than two yards at the most), Rachael sat down, crossing her legs in contentment. How she managed to stay so happy and full of energy was the biggest mystery of Henry's high school career. He wasn't sure how she even was able to stay awake; even if they weren't in the same periods, she had a schedule every bit as challenging as Henry himself did. But Henry didn't have a yard and a half of pin-straight hair trailing behind him that, according to Rachael, took 'oh, you know, about an hour or so' to dry alone. Henry figured, conservatively, she must be waking up each morning at half past four.

Staring at each other across the separation, Rachael and Henry made faces at each other, at first conveying thoughts as best they could through facial expressions alone, but soon devolving into imitations of animals and a particular mean rendition of their history teacher's scowl. Rachael's laugh, usually so loud, was silent even as she threw her head back and shook with laughter, a sight which was unnerving to Henry no matter how accustomed he was to it over the years.

Shortly, they were joined by a tall boy, hair growing from his chin and eyes that radiated ' _cool_ ' (or so he preferred to think). Seeing her boyfriend, Rachael grabbed his hand, pulling him down into an embrace followed by a chaste kiss, pulling away to mouth a greeting that Henry couldn't make out. Already on their level, Eugene turned to face Henry, smiling and nodding his head back in acknowledgement. Henry gave a similar nod, silently mouthing ' _Morning_ ' to the boy.

Sitting down next to his girlfriend, Eugene looked back towards Henry, pointing his finger towards the boy, before his hand imitated the action of pulling something from his mouth, punctuating it with a quizzical tilt of his head. Though the actions themselves weren't overly expressive, Henry was accustomed to this question by now: ' _You can talk, right?_ ' Henry closed his eyes, serenely nodding his head, before shaking his head and offering a hand that he hoped conveyed ' _No, it's okay._ '

It wasn't an offensive question; just, one that he dealt with every year as Day of Silence came around. Every friend Henry had ever had asked the same question at least once. Rachael was the first, as they were both five years old when Henry learned that he could speak when she couldn't. The following year, she had indicated that he should speak, but a six year old Henry had grabbed her hand and shaken his head vehemently side to side. It was an unspoken promise at that age, and she had never again pressed him to speak. And Henry had only broken the promise that he felt he had made once, when in the fourth grade Rachael fell on the ground at recess and Henry had yelled as loud as he could across the silent playground for a teacher. Even though Rachael had thanked him later, Henry stilled sobbed that he had broken his promise to his best friend.

School buses arriving in full force by now, the trio were joined by the presence of a bushy-haired redhead, who shot each of them warning glares of annoyance before she collapsed in a heap and dug her head into her backpack, kneading at it like a cat to try and make the uncomfortable textbooks into a pillow. None of the friends assembled took offense. Merida wasn't a morning person to begin with, and the bloodshot eyes evidenced the fact that she _had_ , in fact, actually stayed up the entire night finishing the book report due second period.

Still, despite being surrounded by friends, Henry couldn't help himself from looking down the hallway, waiting for the last to arrive. It was the same every morning of the school year. It wasn't that he was ungrateful for his friends or disliked them; he just couldn't wait to see _him_.

It was pointless, he knew. Jack was insanely attractive, both in his face and his body; far more than Henry himself was. And the guy was always in his own world. He managed to keep himself grounded, but if you wanted to talk to him, you would often times need to drag him back to reality, where he invariably had missed more than a few moments of important conversation. At first, Henry had been sure that Jack must have had closer friends elsewhere in the school, people with whom he was fully engaged, never bored. But after a few years, he came to realise that this was just how Jack was. And even if Jack did have other friends in the school, he always joined Henry and them before school and at lunch, and sat together in whatever classes they may share.

Henry figured that was just how Jack expressed his friendship. He wasn't distant, nor was he boring or melancholic. He was simply... well, to be honest, _Jack_. None of them were able to put a description to Jack that seemed to fit consistently. But he was their friend, and that was what mattered.

And none of that had anything to do with the possibility of a crush that Henry had been harbouring for three years now, since they met. No, he was interested in Jack just because he was his friend. He would just scan the crowd, looking and waiting for Jack each morning, because he wanted to see his friend and laugh. Nothing more.

(Henry was a piece of shit liar and he knew it, and so did Rachael, Merida, Eugene, and the entire student body. The only person who seemed oblivious was Jack. Henry wasn't sure whether to be thankful or annoyed, so he was a constant mix of both.)

A crumpled ball of paper hit Henry's turned cheek, and he looked at the culprit, the smiling face of his best friend as she held her Pre-Calculus book up questioningly. Henry stared at her baffled for a few seconds, before tentatively nodding his head and reaching for his backpack. As soon as he unzipped it, however, he jolted with sudden realisation, and passed his maths notebook to the blonde so that she could copy his notes from yesterday.

Turning back to face the direction of the student entrance, Henry's stomach made the same fluttering drop it did every morning, seeing the white-haired boy walking towards them, backpack slung over his shoulders. He walked towards them with a preoccupied gaze to him, and Henry marveled (as he did every morning) that anybody could be so attractive, in body, voice, and personality.

Averting his gaze quickly before Jack could notice his friend gawking at him, Henry was relieved to find that none of his friends had noticed his preoccupation. Trying to prevent himself from staring shamelessly at Jack, Henry forced himself to gaze in any direction other than the approaching boy, and after a moment Eugene shot him a quizzical look; Henry had been focusing on a point in space about four yards directly behind Eugene's head.

The sound of a bookbag _thudd_ ing against the ground sounded next to Henry, and turning himself as controlled as possible, Henry faced Jack as the boy sat down next to him. Waiting the requisite second and a half so that it wouldn't seem that he was too eager, he nodded his head in acknowledgement, before mouthing ' _Morning_ '. Jack nodded back, before digging his hand into his jeans (Henry was decidedly not looking at Jack's pants) and pulling out a short stack of index cards. As Jack flipped through them quickly, rotating a few to face him, Henry could see simple phrases written on them: ' _I'm going to the bathroom_ ' or ' _Can I borrow a pencil?_ ' followed by ' _Can I borrow a sheet of paper?_ ' But Jack selected the one that he wanted, and held it up to Henry.

' _Good morning, Hiccup_ '

Henry's stomach dove, butterflies filling the void left in its wake, as he read over his name two, three times, written in that scrawling script of Jack's. With great struggle, he tore himself away, looking back to Jack and nodding his head with a smile. The white-haired boy then flipped through the stack, pulling out a few other cards. He took one look at the collapsed Merida and placed ' _Morning, Merida_ ' back on top of the pile, but both Rachael and Eugene got personalised greetings.

Henry tried not to feel jealous. He wanted so badly to be something special and unique to Jack, and for the briefest of moments, he had felt like he was. Out of the short list of phrases that Jack thought were important, one of them had been ' _Good morning, Hiccup_ '. Henry had crossed Jack's mind. He tried not to let the fact that his friends had also, probably equally, crossed the white-haired boy's mind depress him (it did). He still felt special (he didn't).

Henry tried to focus on the slanted, curved and elegant letters that just flowed naturally when Jack wrote, spelling out his nickname. He tried to focus on that, to feel special, but to quell the thoughts in his mind that he was _this close_ to Jack; he could reach out, grab his hand, feel his skin against his fingers. Maybe Jack wouldn't pull away. Maybe Jack would even squeeze his hand back, entwining their fingers together and stroking the back of his hand with his thumb, absentmindedly tickling the boy's palm.

He knew that he didn't have a chance with Jack. After all, it was the Day of Silence, and he wasn't talking.

* * *

Classes on the Day of Silence were always the easiest of the semester. Despite the large school, there were only three faculty members who could talk, and they were in high demand. Henry had none of those for teachers.

English classes would consist of silent reading period, with additional chapter assigned to force the students to actually _read_. History teachers would play documentaries, because just because humans couldn't speak it didn't mean that technology stopped functioning. Maths classes were the worst of the lot, because the time was filled with assigned problems due at the end of the period. Nobody liked maths class on the Day of Silence.

Lunch came around, the school bell rang decidedly louder in the quiet corridors.

Pushing in their chairs, Henry's biology class was dismissed for lunch, most of the students bounding up and towards the door. Having the third lunch slot, his classmates were ravenous by the time lunch came around. Henry would be too, if he didn't clandestinely sneak food from his packed lunch and eat it when the teacher wasn't looking.

Still, by the time he would get to the actual lunch period, all that would be left would be his peanut butter sandwich, and Henry was _always_ hungry. So he would buy himself a school lunch as well. His father gladly paid for the expense; anything that Henry could do to add some bulk to his own body was wholeheartedly supported by his dad.

Grabbing a slice of cheese pizza (and eyeing a second piece of pizza longingly), Henry made his way to the checkout line, tapping his right food, shoulders slumped and swaying slowly in impatience. It was what felt like an eternity (which here was around seven minutes of agonizing waiting), and at one point Henry broke down and nibbled on the tip of the pizza, trying his hardest to maintain his composure and not look foolish. Finally making it to the front of the line, he grabbed a bag of chips as a last-minute addition, and smiled at the face of the plump woman before him. She tapped the screen of the computer a few times, and a LED ticker displayed the total cost of the food. Hiccup fished a few dollars out of his pocket, feeling dumb for not being prepared after having all this time waiting, before he nodded his thanks and walked away from the lunch line.

The cafeteria proper was a large, open space, hemmed in on all sides by poured concrete, which had been the vogue of architecture when the school had been built apparently. On a normal day, the room was alive with shouts and hundreds of voices all talking at once, and the commotion and sounds of life could be heard through the walls of classrooms that bordered the cafeteria. But on the Day of Silence, the room was almost completely quiet, despite the obvious signs of life happening in front of his eyes. It was unnerving to watch, and Henry's first thought was how similar it felt to a horror movie, where the students were neither alive nor dead. Instinct tugged at him to make a noise, to break the silence, but there was a tiny, irrational fear that if he did, something insidious would happen. Shrugging the feeling off, he stood on the ball of his foot, able to balance deftly with his prosthetic after many years, scanning over the heads of the students, looking for his friends.

Henry, Rachael, Merida and Jack all had the same lunch period, an unintentional coincidence of their semester scheduling. Eugene alone had the second lunch period, but the boy used the time to see his other friends. When he had first shown interest in Rachael, Henry had been wary, but the boy had proven to be truly devoted to Henry's best friend. Clearly enough so that lunch was the only time that he had a chance to visit his old life and old friends.

Locating his friends with thanks to Jack's hair, Henry navigated the labyrinth of tables before sitting down at the small, round table across from Jack. To his right, Merida was content eating a cheeseburger, and to his left, Rachael threw a grape into her mouth as she smiled, flipping the page of her novel innocently.

Henry knew that was a downright lie. Rachael liked to abuse the Day of Silence as a chance to prank or mess with her friends; they couldn't, after all, stop her. It was the perfect crime, in her opinion. Over the years, Henry had become accustomed to the Day of Silence being a redux of April Fools.

Henry glanced over at Rachael, who felt the gaze and looked up over the brim of her book. Grinning wickedly, she flicked her eyes back to the pages in front of her.

It started slow at first, her left hand releasing from the book and travelling down. It was much like a cat preparing to pounce: slow at first, and then all at once. Before Henry could provide warning, Rachael's hand shot out, poking Jack in the side, before stealing a french fry from his lunch and chewing it victoriously.

Rachael might enjoy pulling pranks, but she was absolutely awful at them. If he had to be truthful, Henry wouldn't even call them 'pranks'. This was one of her staples, however. She would feign innocence, then poke (or tickle, if that had a special effect on the victim) someone before stealing a piece of their food. It wasn't dastardly, and everyone knew exactly who was performing the action, but Rachael found a great deal of enjoyment from it all the same. Jack just happened to be the unlucky victim this year around.

Two minutes passed by while Henry ate his pizza, and Jack pulled out a piece of printer paper from his backpack, furnishing two pencils and drawing a tic-tac-toe grid before sliding it to the middle of the table, leaving it open for anyone to join him. Henry picked up the pencil and drew his mark in the bottom corner as Rachael's hand poked Jack in the side, stealing another fry. The white haired boy showed a look of mild annoyance, and pushed his plate of food a few inches away from the blonde girl.

Henry wasn't entirely sure how it was possible, but Jack was a shitty tic-tac-toe player. Over the next five minutes, Henry singlehandedly (quite literally, as one hand was immobilised with pizza) dominated six of the eight games that they played. In that time, Rachael struck twice more; the first, Jack glowered at her, and after the last, he pursed his lips and moved the plate to the other side of the table.

Henry could tell that Rachael was enjoying this tremendously. It was the little pleasures that made her happy, and being an annoying shit was one of her strong points when she wanted it to be. With silence on her side, all she had to do was turn her back to the victim, and she could isolate herself from any complaints.

By this point, Henry could tell that Jack was visibly irked, and he was hoping against hope that Rachael would stop the games now. No such luck, however. Jack had just begun drawing the ninth tic-tac-toe board (Henry was surprised the boy hadn't given up yet) when Rachael struck. She managed to poke Jack in the side, and was reaching for the plate of french fries when the boy swatted at her hand. Rachael was faster, however, and pulled her arm out safely, dodging the blow, Jack's fingers slamming against the table. In victory, Rachael reached for the largest fry on the plate.

"GOD _DAMMIT_ , RACHAEL," Jack yelled.

What pitiful noise had been managed in the cafeteria through the rustling of backpacks or the chewing of food fell to stark silence as every head in the room turned towards their table.

Rachael's hand lay prone on the table, the french fry fallen on the surface. Her book slipped from her grasp and hit the floor as her eyes opened wide in surprise, head turning to face Jack with shock. Merida's face mirrored that of the other girl, astonishment written across it.

Where moments before there had been anger, Jack's eyes now registered surprise in them. His hands had been raised, ready to fight off Rachael's unwanted attacks, but the limbs remained frozen in the air before him. Jack's mouth hung open, having never fully closed from yelling. There was no emotion on his face other than perplexity that his voice had actually made sound; Jack wasn't a particularly talkative person on a regular day, and he had grown up simply accepting the quiet of the Day of Silence.

All heads in the cafeteria, though, mirrored the same look of surprise, directed at the white haired boy at the round table near the large grey pier by the science wing.

After a moment, however, when the shock gave way to the realisation of the truth, Henry blinked once, then twice.

When Jack finally looked up from his hands, confusion still plain about him, he stared right ahead into the wide, toothy smile spread across Henry's freckled face, two crooked front teeth visible beneath thin, curved lips.

**Author's Note:**

> So I don't even know why I bother setting out to write short fanfic; this was supposed to be around 2000 words, and then I got carried away. But I'm happy with how it turned out.
> 
> The story itself is kind of odd, but I was inspired by a post that I saw and then commented on [here](http://ahhhlec.tumblr.com/post/82764722064/221cbakerstreet-how-about-for-day-of-silence). That spawned this huge blowup, however, because I apparently angered a sj superwholockian high school girl. But I liked the idea, and someone told me to hijack the prompt, so here it was.
> 
> I hope you liked it :3
> 
> Also, I'm sorry that I haven't been writing more OTL I've been so busy with the [Hijack Dating Sim](http://www.deitloff.com/hds/).


End file.
